by Daniel Mittler

Sustainable development has become the new "holy grail" of urban studies as well as city-based local politics (Hall, 1995: 412). Sustainable development must be considered the buzzword of the 1990s (Reid, 1995). It has become the new "catch-all" phrase to which everyone - researcher, politician, and activist alike - refers (and be it only to legitimise their preconceived actions or gain access to research and campaigning funds; Elbinghaus & Stickler, 1996).
Yet, while everybody talks about sustainability, hardly anyone agrees on what the concept means or implies. At least 300 different definitions of the term are currently in circulation (Dobson, 1996) and even subfields, such as urban sustainability, are expanding constantly, generating ever new meanings for the term (see below).
The task of this introduction, therefore, is to give a brief guide through the chaotic multitude of writings on sustainable development.
History must come first - in order to understand where the concept came from and how its profile was raised in the international community (Part A). The operationsalisations of the concept for pratical politics are explored next - focusing, specifically, on urban operationalisations (Part B). This history and also the uses sustainable development has been put to, has led many to attack the concept as a meaningless chimera disguising �old-style� power politics.
Sustainable development has, in this vain, been called "killing the environment with compassion" (Smith, 1991, quoted in Elbinghaus & Stickler, 1996:38). These critiques have to be answered if we want to continue to talk of and study sustainability. They are thus addressed in Part C. Part D argues that a reply to these criticisms of sustainable development is possible; provided, however, that we define sustainable development in a more rigorous fashion than the (most popular) definitions of sustainability discussed in part A. The notion of environmental space - an ethically based practical operationalisation of sustainable development - is put forward as a definition of sustainable development which can take the sustainability discourse beyond meaningless and vague declarations.
However, this discourse, too, does, of course, have its limitations. These are therefore (briefly) explored in part E. Part F, finally, links the previous discussion of environmental space back to the issue of urban sustainability and outlines how environmental space terminology can be used in order to evaluate local progress towards urban sustainability, as the empirical part of this study in later chapters will indeed (aim to) do.

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